Nadine Gordimer - The Conservationist

Riding his bicycle without any particular destination, Izak stopped to see what the Indians were doing. It was one of the sons from the shop who was climbing the struts that supported their rainwater tank. They didn’t have a windmill like those at the farm, but there was that old well in the yard where the people used a hand-pump to get water. The Indian was going to paint the struts; a tin of paint was wedged in the angle formed by a couple of bars that formed an X on the way up, and he hung easily, when he’d chosen where to begin, feet balanced wide apart on a cross-piece, left hand round an upright while with the right he drew long strokes of red-brown down the bars. He was dressed like a white boy from town on a Sunday — Izak saw them when they came heading along the main road on their motorbikes — with rubber sandals held by a thong between the toes and tight cropped shorts of the kind that have a little metal buckle and built-in belt. He was naked above the waist and as he moved so did the chain with something gilt hanging from it that he wore on his breast. A little girl from the Indians’ house stood, immediately below, gazing up and asking questions and wouldn’t go away. They argued in their language until her brother or whatever he was pretended to hold out the brush to dribble paint on her, and she ran screaming and kicking her legs in long white socks. Izak could see him press up the muscles round his shoulder-blades and get on with the job. It was tricky to stub round the angles of the iron but he was doing quite well; Izak did not know why he should suddenly stop and climb down, feeling for his footholds and not missing one, and then walk all round the whole edifice, looking up at it.

Izak spoke, in Afrikaans — It’s high, ay. — The Indian was the young one, not one of the schoolboys but the youngest grown one, about the same age as himself. Jacobus and even Solomon did not know exactly when they were born, but Izak knew he was born on the 21st April, 1956; he had it written down on a piece of paper.

The Indian turned dark glasses upon him. That shiny curly hair they have dangled over the metal rims and he was showing teeth, his face screwed up against the sun. — It’s all full of rust. Going to fall soon if a person doesn’t paint it. —

Izak laughed. — Too old. —

— I should’ve started with the platform. That’s the trouble. I’m a fool, man. —

Izak was on his bike, but not in the saddle; it was tipped to one side and he was sitting on the central bar, supporting himself and the machine by a leg thrust out on either side. — You can still do it. Climb up the other side, man. —

— I know. —

They both gazed at the structure a moment.

— Are you going to paint the tank? —

— You don’t paint these. It’s asbestos — some special stuff you don’t —

— Yes, I know asbestos, man. Like for the roof. —

The Indian began to climb again and this time gained the platform. Once up, he stretched his legs behind him, face-down on the ledge like an athlete doing push-ups, and carefully fished with an arm over the side to pull up the paint tin.

— You going to do the platform? —

He didn’t answer but shook his head very slowly.

Well what was he going to do up there then? Izak could see by the way the head was shaken the Indian had decided on something. But just at that moment Izak’s attention was distracted by one of the farm children who came along the road with a tiny tin of syrup balanced on her head. She wanted him to give her a lift back, pleaded and nagged. — I’m tired, Boetie. -

— How are you tired, Sesi, look at that little thing, it’s not heavy. —

— But my foot’s sore. —

— What foot? What sore foot? You just want to go on the bicycle, I know. —

When he looked up again a band of brown was begun round the top of the tank. It was not a very large tank, shaped like a barrel, and by standing on his toes — the red rubber soles of his sandals showed — the Indian could reach up the brush to the rim. He was going to paint the tank after all? No. When he had eased himself all round it and finished the top band, he squatted and with some difficulty, because squatting took up more room than standing on the platform, made the same band, the width of the paint brush, round the bottom. Now he was starting to write — no, draw something on the belly of the tank, where it faced Izak and the road. Izak began to pass remarks and show off, gently, not going too far, laughing.

— What are you doing? What’s that you’re making there? It’s a face! What is this? Ag come on, man —

The Indian only shook his head again slowly; he knew what he was doing.

— What thing is it? —

When the sign was gone over a second time to thicken the outlines, he drew himself aside from it and turned the dark glasses once again: — Don’t you see? —

The outline of an egg, standing upright, was divided inside by four lines, or rather one vertical line that half-way down subdivided, branching off a shorter line to either side at an angle. The Indian hung there a moment beside his work, swinging one foot. Then he came down in only two movements, the second a clear leap, easy as a cat from a roof, and began wiping his hands on a bit of rag. He did not look up at what he had painted.

Izak knew that egg. He saw it on the motorbikes. Even on shirts. It was smart. People wore it like you wear Jesus’s cross. It was, he saw now, what was shiny hanging at the end of the chain on the Indian’s bare chest. But he did not know what it really meant, as he knew the cross and also the six-pointed star that the people of the Church of Zion had on their flag. — It looks nice there. —

The Indian still did not look up at it. He had not seen how his handiwork looked from the ground, as Izak did.

— I’d like to buy me one. You must get one for me in your shop, ay. —

The Indian laughed and shook his head again without looking up at him, either.

— Oh, please, man, I like to have one (he patted his breast, where it would lie). How much you selling for? Why you don’t get it for me —

— We don’t keep it in the shop. -

They didn’t talk together any more after that, because the Indian didn’t talk. Izak hung on for a while zigzagging the front wheel of his bicycle in the dust and watching him return to the job of painting the struts.

— You’ll break a leg — It was the voice of Dawood, the most recently-married brother, speaking Gujerati. The painter glanced down a second behind his dark glasses: the farm boy had tired of waiting for conversation and gone away; the little sister had the married brother by the hand, as if she had dragged him there.

— What’s that for? — Dawood was tussling with the child, laughing.

— It’s the peace sign. -

— I know , stupid –

Two days later, stirring one of the cups of milky tea that was brought to him regularly from the house, the father spoke from a silence between them. — Jalal, why do you have to put that (still holding the teaspoon, he flapped the hand from the wrist) up there. —

He answered in English without a smile. — For fun. —

— But two feet high, everybody sees it from a mile away. —

— What d’you expect me to put up? The South African flag? The moon of Islam? —

— You wear it hanging round your neck — all right —

— What’s wrong with it. What’s the difference round my neck or on the water tank. —

— Yes, it’s all right for the white boys, they’ve got no other troubles. The hippies. White students at the university. And it looks red — the colour of the paint, I mean —

The young man’s face closed in on the other in cruel amazement, grinning and spitting — Red! Red! You believe everything you read in their papers, everything they tell you on the radio. You swallow it all down. Day after day. If they tell you it’s communists, then it’s communists. Red! And let me tell you something, that paint’s your paint, it’s brown bloody paint from the store-room. Red! If they tell you Koolie , then it’s Koolie , hey, why not — you believe what they say is true, don’t you. —